La variación terminológica en la comprensión y producción de textos académicos: Propuesta de representación en un diccionario especializado de aprendizaje de Psicología

In this article, a lexicographical research on terminological variation and its representation in a monolingual specialized dictionary for university students is presented. This proposal draws on a descriptive study of term variation in a corpus of research articles and a test evaluating the level of knowledge of terminological variation in Psychology students in comprehension and production tasks. Results show that intra textual term variation is used as a cognitive and discursive device that assists knowledge transfer and text cohesion. Furthermore, students are aware of the usefulness of this cognitive-linguistic device but have trouble in identifying certain variation parameters and using it properly in communicative tasks. Finally, a microstructure for a learners’ dictionary is presented in which different types of term variation are displayed along with information in order to help users to exploit the cognitive and discursive possibilities of this device.